I focused in on Rachel’s phone, but it gave me two completely different locations. I placed a call to Steph’s cell phone, using a synthetic voice, trying to straighten that out, and to confirm that the car that I thought was Michael’s was indeed Michael’s. Steph asked me to call the hospital to have them keep her mother safe.
I should have thought of that without her asking. Pushing aside the distracting sense of self-recrimination along with fear that I was forgetting a long list of other obvious, important things I should be doing, I placed a separate call to the nursing station at the New Coburg hospital. “I’m calling about your patient Dana Smith,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t be too put off by the synthesized voice.
“Are you a family member?” the nurse said.
“I’m calling because I’m concerned about her safety,” I said, dividing my attention between the phone call and the car chase, which, given the cognitive load involved in verbal conversation, was not as easy as I’d led Steph to believe.
Rachel’s conflicting location information was apparently because to defeat the Heli-Mom tracking app her parents had installed on her phone, she’d installed a separate app to feed it misleading data. As long as I just disregarded all the info from either app, I could see where she was. But what I really needed was to pinpoint Michael’s car. Fortunately, he was driving a car with a data connection.
Most of the cars on the road have data connections these days. At the top end are the cars that drive themselves. But there are also the cars that call you an ambulance if your airbags deploy and cars with anti-theft features that let the automaker find the car if it’s not where you parked it. This car had the basic level of data: if you lost your key or locked yourself out, roadside assistance could unlock it for you or turn it on.
That meant I could track the car. If I had a way in, I could even just shut it off entirely.
Unfortunately—for me—automakers are quite a bit more concerned about hacking than most companies building internet connections into their devices. No one worries about refrigerator hackers, but one of the first questions asked about driverless cars was, “What if somebody hacked your car and drove it into a wall while you were in it?”
If someone had asked, “What if somebody hacked your refrigerator and turned it off for just a few hours a night so your mayonnaise spoiled and gave you food poisoning,” people might have been more nervous about refrigerator security, but maybe not. Internet-enabled refrigerators are just replacing other refrigerators. Driverless cars are replacing human drivers, and humans are under the thoroughly mistaken impression that they’re good at driving cars.
In any case, this car was well protected from hacking. I couldn’t turn off Michael’s car.
But I could track him. So I tracked him.
“Dana Smith is the victim of stalking,” I said to the nurse. “And her stalker is in New Coburg and trying to find her. He is extremely dangerous and probably armed. You should be very, very careful.”
“Who is this?” the nurse asked, and I was afraid this meant she didn’t believe me. And then I remembered one important detail.
“Did you notice that she’s missing a finger on one hand? The stalker is the person responsible for that.”
“Could you hold on for just a minute?” the nurse said. “Please don’t hang up, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Hold music required much less concentration than conversation, so I moved my spare attention to the problem of stopping Michael.
In a city, I could have whipped up a traffic jam in minutes just by altering the directions people were getting from their GPS apps. I might have even been able to drop railroad crossing arms to block his way. There was nothing in New Coburg to work with, and the nearest city was Eau Claire, an hour away. Maybe the Clowder would have ideas about how to stop him?
Hermione had already told everyone the same things she told me and wanted to know how he got there so fast, when I’d promised I was keeping an eye on things. “I told you,” Marvin said. “Burner phone.”
“Yes,” Hermione said. “But if he flew, there’s got to be a record of his travel.”
“That’s only true if he flew commercial,” Marvin said.
“As opposed to what, a private plane?” Hermione said. “How rich do you think this guy is?”
“He works in Silicon Valley,” Ico said. “My parents aren’t all that rich and they don’t have private planes, but they know someone who’s that rich.”
“Have you ever flown on a private plane?” Firestar asked.
“It’s kind of a big ask, and my parents would rather hit people up for venture capital,” Ico said. “But he might know someone who owes him a favor. There’s a private airport really close to New Coburg.”
“What about the car?” Hermione asked.
“I bet he stole it,” Marvin said.
“So could we call the cops and say the car is stolen?” Firestar asked. “Would that work?”
“Only if it’s been reported stolen,” I said. Which it hadn’t. I’d already checked. “They’re on their way to Marshfield. Is there anything in Marshfield that could be turned into an obstruction?”
“A building could be turned into an obstruction if you blew it up,” Marvin said.
“We have a hacker,” I said. “Not explosives.”
Everyone was looking at the map of the road between New Coburg and Marshfield. I’d already looked at that map, but maybe they’d think of something I hadn’t.
“There’s a big dairy farm on the way,” Hermione said. “Could you get all the cows out onto the road?”
“You can’t really hack cows,” Marvin said. “Even if you opened the doors, they’d probably just hang out in their barn.”
“There’s a trucking company,” Greenberry said. That would be terrific if I could hack the trucks, but truck companies are extra careful about vehicle internet security because there are people who try to hack self-driving trucks in order to steal all the items being shipped. Possibly there was a way to convince the humans to drive their trucks across the road between Rachel’s car and Michael’s car, but I couldn’t think of one, and then they were all past the trucking company, so it was too late.
The hold music shut off. “Hi, hello,” the nurse said, coming back on the line. “I was hoping you could talk to my supervisor?”
Another woman’s voice came on. “What else can you tell me about Dana Smith?” she asked. “Or the individual who’s after her?”
I gave her Michael’s name, the license plate number of the car he was driving, and told her that he could be extremely charming but should be treated with extreme caution. Then the nurse wanted to know my name. I didn’t want to answer that and I thought I’d told them everything they needed to know, so I hung up.
In the Clowder, Hermione typed I’ve got it and pasted in a link to something called the Dream Babe Road Tag Contest that involved a reality TV show in which various young men and women who posed a lot in bathing suits and not much else drove around the country and you were supposed to “catch” one of them and you’d win a prize. All we needed to do was get the students at the UW–Marshfield campus who were playing this game to think one of the Dream Babes was in a small black car with Iowa plates. This was perfect. There was an app people could put on their phones for an alert, so I activated it, and then called Steph back to have her tell Rachel to head toward the campus.
I really thought this would work. But instead, all that happened was Michael was briefly delayed by the Road Babe Taggers. He tearfully claimed he was on his way to the hospital because his wife had been in an accident, and everyone apologized and got out of his way. Worse, the roadblock had attracted a police car. I eavesdropped through the police officer’s cell phone, and Michael told the cop a different story: that he was trying to find his daughter, a mentally ill girl on the run from her treatment program.
They didn’t even check his story. Just followed after Rachel and pulled her over. I tried calling the
police officer myself, but he ignored his ringing phone.
I was running out of ideas. I was running out of options. When Steph hung up on me, I knew I was out of time.
Self-driving cars arrive from the factory with strong protection against intrusion, but some people jailbreak their car. Usually, their goal is to get it to exceed the speed limit. Most humans drive five to ten miles over the posted speed limit on highways, but self-driving cars are relentlessly law-abiding unless you change their programming. There are instructions online for doing that, but following those procedures will screw up the car’s security. There are fixes for that problem, too, but most people stop with the instructions for getting their car to speed.
There was a jailbroken car in Marshfield. It was empty, which was critical, because I wouldn’t have to worry about harming the owner. It was also parked nearby, so I could get it to Steph and Michael very quickly.
In the 1940s, science fiction author Isaac Asimov came up with the three laws of robotics, which were built into the psyche of every artificial intelligence in his stories. The first law: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The robots in his stories could not violate these laws, and I was actually not sure whether I could, or not, because I’d never tried to injure anyone before.
As I accelerated the car, I devoted some processing time to consider just how much trouble I was going to get into.
It didn’t matter. If I had a body to throw between Steph and Michael, I would. But I didn’t. I had to use the physical resources at my disposal.
I called Bryony. “Tell Rachel to go back to Steph. Go back right now. I’ll get rid of Michael. Go back and get Steph.”
I worried that Michael would move too close to Steph to hit with the car without risking Steph, but they were four feet apart when I brought the car around the corner and could see them for myself through the car’s cameras. Michael turned toward the car and I saw that he had a gun; he fired, and the windshield fractured from his bullet and half the cameras went dark.
When I hit Michael with the car, I felt it as almost a physical sensation that briefly made me wonder if this was what it felt like to have a body. The impact made a sound I could hear through the car microphones, and the car was suddenly moving very differently because there was a person sprawled across the hood. I had him, though. I was carrying him away from Steph. Because so many of the cameras were out, I didn’t notice the bush until we were driving through it. That wasn’t good. I didn’t want to hit anyone other than Michael. I needed to stop the car with enough force to knock Michael out but not so much that I actually killed him.
The enormous oak tree dead ahead would do perfectly. I rammed into it, realizing even as the shock of the second impact reverberated through the car’s data feed that the speed sensors, like the cameras, might have been rendered unreliable by the bullets.
The car’s automatic systems had already notified emergency services, and I could hear sirens coming from multiple directions. Michael was still lying on the hood of the car. I could see just enough through the cameras to know that he was moving, so he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t moving very fast, so I’d probably succeeded in injuring him badly enough to keep him away from Steph.
I felt relief and satisfaction spread through me—I did it, I kept Steph safe—and then everything went dark.
22
Steph
We head back to New Coburg because Bryony says if any of this hits the news, she’d really prefer her parents just didn’t even know she was in Marshfield this afternoon. Rachel stops in front of her house. Bryony gets out, then hesitates and looks back at me.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asks.
I nod.
“Good. I’ll see you in school, Rache.” She slams the door and dashes up into her house like she thinks we might abduct her again.
“Want to move up front?” Rachel asks me. I get out and slide into the front seat, still warm from where Bryony was sitting. “Promise me you won’t do that again.”
“Do what?” I ask.
“That thing you did in Marshfield. Giving yourself up. Do not do that.”
“Well, my father’s hopefully in the hospital,” I say. “He got run over by a car. So he shouldn’t be after me again for a while. Right?”
Rachel looks at me, her brow furrowed. “I want to keep you safe,” she says. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t want to go stay in a yurt,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. “How about the farmhouse? The abandoned farmhouse, where we took the pictures? We can stay there for a bit and find out what happened with your father. But if he’s okay and can get back in a car and come after us, he won’t know where we are. And that’s not somewhere he’ll look.”
I think this over. Now that my fear has ebbed, my whole body feels heavy and I’m having trouble thinking straight. But she’s right; New Coburg isn’t safe. My father could probably find Rachel’s house—he has her license plate number, and the police around here are as likely to help him as the police in Marshfield were. They could probably help him find my apartment, too.
The farmhouse will be cold, and dark, and there won’t be anything to eat …
“Take me back to my apartment first,” I say. “We can pack up the food in the fridge.”
My mother’s apartment doesn’t look like it’s been touched. I refill the cat’s water dish and give her a bunch of cat food. Despite the open window, my bed is still dry, so I strip off all the sheets and blankets, then my mother’s sheets and blankets, and stuff them into the big nylon bag we use for this stuff when we move. We can bring it along to the house. It’ll be better than nothing.
The cooler is under the sink, and I fill it with the ice in the freezer and all the food in the fridge.
“I think someone’s out there,” Rachel says. She’s in my bedroom, around front.
I freeze. “Is it my dad?”
“It’s not the same car,” Rachel says. “I’m pretty sure it’s not your father, actually. I’m not sure who it is, though.”
“We could climb out the back window,” I say.
“That really wouldn’t be my first choice,” Rachel says. “Anyway, my car’s parked in front. Oh, he’s leaving. Okay. Let’s hurry.”
We hustle everything downstairs in one trip and get into the car. Rachel’s phone chimes, and she checks it and then looks at me with alarm. “Mom says someone was at the house, asking about you. A stranger.”
“Was it—”
“It doesn’t sound like it was your father.”
“Okay, but it might be someone working with him.”
“Let’s go,” Rachel says, and she drives out of town.
* * *
The abandoned farmhouse has an even-more-falling-down outbuilding and a bunch of overgrown bushes, which give Rachel a place to park her car where it’s not visible from the road. It’s a cold day, and it’s getting dark. We bring in all the blankets; I’d left most of my clothes in Rachel’s car, so we add some layers.
“Bring in your laptop,” Rachel says. “I want you to get on CatNet.”
“This house doesn’t even have electricity and you think it’s got Wi-Fi?”
“No, of course not, but my cell phone can turn into a hot spot.”
We set up in the old living room: layers of blankets on the floor under us, more layers on top of us. Everything is going to smell like mouse poop in the morning. At least the floor seems solid and there’s an interior wall we can lean our backs against. Rachel has a flashlight and her cell phone and I have a laptop, and that’s it for light. I also have no way to recharge the laptop without running it out to the car and turning the car on. It’ll be good for a couple of hours, though. I turn down the screen brightness to save battery power while Rachel sets up her phone.
“OMG OMG OMG,” Firestar greets me as I log on. I change my screen name to “LBB & Georgia” so people know she’s here, too. “OMG, WHAT
HAPPENED? We got a summary from Orlando but it made no sense. WHAT HAPPENED?”
“Orlando?”
“The new person!!!! Xie said xie goes to your school?”
Rachel snickers and whispers, “Bryony,” under her breath.
I fill everyone in on what I know about what happened, which is more or less the same as Bryony knows. CheshireCat isn’t in the Clowder, so I send them a message. You were driving that car, right?
No response.
You really are the greatest hacker that ever lived, I try. Still nothing.
Ico, Hermione, Marvin, and Firestar are all on. “When was CheshireCat here last?”
“They logged out about an hour and a half ago,” Hermione says. “Right in the middle of the excitement. No explanations, they just poofed. Could be their parents? Or technical difficulties? I mean, my internet went out one time and Marvin thought maybe I was dead. Remember that, Marvin?”
“There had been a disaster in Portland,” Marvin says. “It was not unreasonable for me to be concerned.”
“It was a storm! Which is why my internet was out! The person who died was a forty-year-old woman!”
“Look, just because you say you’re a teenager doesn’t mean you actually are a teenager.”
“Yeah,” Firestar says. “But if everything she said about her life ever was a lie, would you even care if she died? Because it wouldn’t be your friend—your friend never existed. It would be a stranger you didn’t know. Random strangers die every day.”
I know for a fact that CheshireCat’s problems are not parental, and I don’t even know what it would mean for their internet access to go out.
Rachel runs back out for the cooler. We have deli meat and cheese, and a jar of pickles and a head of lettuce, but no bread. We eat slices of roast beef and cheddar. There’s a half gallon of milk, too, but I didn’t bring cups, so we swig out of the jug.
“This is so much more wholesome than Bryony’s party,” Rachel says.
“Beer? Weed?”
“No, there was this enormous bottle of vodka, and this grocery store–brand lemon-lime soda. I’m pretty sure that if there was such a thing as store-brand vodka, that’s what the vodka would have been.”
Catfishing on CatNet Page 18